Challenges to Applying Virtual Reality Technology and Techniques to Visual Analytics

Visual analytics is the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. It has grown out of and is strongly related to information visualization. Visual analytic tools assist analysts in detecting the expected and discovering the unexpected from complex, noisy, incomplete, heterogeneous, and sometimes deliberately deceptive data. VR/AR research has claimed for years to provide the potential for more effective environments to understand and explore information spaces. This would seem to make VR technology a natural for application to visual analytics. However, visual analytics is focused on the analytical process not the tools and technology. As such, any new methods, techniques, and technologies need to show benefit to analysts working on real problems. Additionally, the majority of visual analytics research funding is not focused on disruptive physical interface technologies. Generally speaking, new technologies and techniques for visual analytics need to function within the current analytical environment. The purpose of this panel is to introduce the domain of visual analytics to the audience and explore how and where VR/AR research can be adapted for use in visual analytics. The panelists have been selected based on topic areas of research that have potential for near term insertion or impact on visual analytics. This panel will focus on the hard issues of defining what it will take to get VR technology introduced into the visual analytics research funding stream.